


... Is But A Dream

by novemberhush



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: But talking about things will get you there faster, Dreams can come true, Lack of Communication, M/M, Misunderstandings, Pining James
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 20:11:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11364771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novemberhush/pseuds/novemberhush
Summary: James has a wonderful dream of how things could be between him and Robbie, but it takes a heartbreaking turn just before he wakes. Will he read too much into it or can he shake it off and not let it affect his relationship with his boss in the real world? (Come on, when has life ever been that simple for James Hathaway?)





	... Is But A Dream

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! I posted this on tumblr a while ago, but it didn't turn out quite like I intended so I let it sit for a while to see if anything came to me, but nope, that didn't happen. So I'm biting the bullet and posting it here. The inspiration for this story actually came from a dream I really had. Thankfully, however, unlike James I'm not secretly nursing romantic feelings for the guy I dreamt about. But I was still a little annoyed at him when I woke up. I couldn't help imagining how heartbroken James would be in the same situation, though, and so this fic was born. Not beta read so any and all mistakes are my own. Unlike the characters herein. Happy reading! :-)

It had been a lovely dream - at first.

  
Robbie Lewis looking at him in a way that made James blush right down to the soles of his feet. (Even just the subsequent memory of that look, unreal though it had been, had the same effect on James in waking life.)

  
Pulling him up when he called him ‘sir’ outside of work (“I keep tellin’ you, man! Outside of work I’m ‘Robbie’, not ‘sir’.”)

  
Complimenting him, be it overtly or obliquely, but none the less sincere either way. Appearing to use any excuse to touch him. Laughing at all of James’ facetious little asides as if he was the wittiest man he’d ever had the good fortune to meet.

  
Asking him out. Not just for a pint or two after work or over to his for a takeaway, but actually _out_ out. Like on a _date_.

Taking James to a funfair, of all places. His dreaming brain had explained it away as some charity event for the Widows’ and Orphans’ Benevolent Fund so it wasn’t completely beyond the realm of possibility. Well, no more so than what happened next.

  
Robbie taking James’ hand in his, in an unambiguously, unmistakably romantic gesture, right there, for the whole world (or Oxfordshire’s finest boys and girls in blue and their associated support services, anyway) to see. James had hardly dared to breathe. (God, the explaining they would have had to do to Innocent if that had really happened! He should have known then it was a dream, James later thought wryly.)

  
The funfair portion of the dream segued into a candlelit dinner for two. Somewhere intimate, but unpretentious. Comfortable and down to earth. Exactly the type of place James could imagine Robbie liking.

  
Robbie looking more dashing than he had any right to in a cashmere sweater the colour of sapphires. Something he’d probably never wear in real life, but which brought out the wonderful blue of his eyes. It looked so soft, James wanted to reach out and caress it, but even in his dreams there were limits to his bravery when it came to revealing himself to his boss.

  
But that didn’t stop Dream James from feeling like he was on Cloud Nine. The whole time he hadn’t quite been able to believe this was actually happening (which, of course, it wasn’t, but Dream James didn’t _know_ it was a dream at the time), but Dream Robbie had been as dogged and determined as the actual man himself and Dream James had started to let himself think it might all be real. And then he had noticed it.

  
The way those blue eyes drifted over James’ shoulder. Just for a second, but long enough for it to register that it wasn’t the first time it had happened.

  
No, the first time was right after Robbie had given him that smouldering look. They’d been at a crime scene and the Forensics team and Dr. Hobson had been floating around in the background.

  
Then it had happened again as Dream Robbie had asked James to accompany him to the charity fair. Right outside the pathology lab. Not the most romantic venue, granted, but when you discover that maybe your unrequited love for someone isn’t quite as unrequited as you think, well, you don’t tend to worry about the setting for the revelation.

  
Then at the funfair, right before Robbie had taken his hand, quite close to the coconut shy where Dr. Hobson had been trying her hand at winning her very own teddy bear.

  
And now, in the restaurant over dinner, when Robbie had moved to sit closer to James and threw a quick look over his shoulder as he did so.

James had started to turn to see what had caught his eye when Robbie had reached out and took hold of his hand again and James’ attention had instantly snapped back to the man beside him. Whatever was going on over his shoulder couldn’t be any more arresting than what was going on right in front of him. Robbie Lewis wasn’t just holding his hand, and in public, again. He was leaning in. Coming closer to James, and _oh God_ , he was kissing him!

  
Gently, tenderly, _lovingly_.

  
James’ eyes had slipped closed, but as Robbie slowly pulled away from him as the kiss ended they fluttered open again. Just in time to see Robbie glance over his shoulder once more. And this time James didn’t have to look behind him to see what was going on.

  
There was a mirror on the wall he hadn’t noticed before (or perhaps it had only just materialised, this being a dream and all), but which now, still feeling the soft press of Robbie’s lips against his own, James found his eyes drawn towards. What he saw there made his stomach turn over and his heart plummet. Or rather, _who_ he saw.

  
Dr. Laura Hobson, face like thunder, storming out of the restaurant, abandoning her own dinner companion.

  
Suddenly James had known. It had all been an act, all for her benefit. None of it had been real. Robbie had just wanted to make her jealous and James with his stupid, embarrassing, _ridiculous_ devotion to his boss had been the perfect tool for doing just that. And that was when he woke up.

  
The ache he had felt in his dream upon realising it was all a pretence followed him into the real world. Heartsore, he lay in his bed alone ( _always alone_ ) and wept very real tears at the very real hurt he felt. It wasn’t just the hangover of feelings from the dream that made him weep, however. It was what the dream _meant_. Or what he thought it meant, anyway.

  
For weeks now, nay, _months_ , he had felt hope, long-buried perhaps, but interred before its time, seemingly not dead after all, stirring in his breast once again. He had felt the bond between Robbie and himself deepening, maturing, becoming everything he had tried to tell himself he didn’t want, but had secretly yearned for, for years now.

  
The need for personal space, never great between them to begin with, had diminished even further. All those casual touches he had attempted to inure himself against seemed to not only multiply in frequency and number, but appeared to last longer, too.

  
Robbie’s hand lingering on his shoulder as he leant over unnecessarily close to James to look at something on his computer screen. His fingers brushing James’ over a pint glass or coffee mug and not seeming in any hurry to pull away. His hand in the small of James’ back, guiding him through a door and then staying put as they made their way through a busy pub or an empty office alike. And then there were the looks.

  
At first it had just been looking up in time to see Robbie looking away hurriedly. Then it was feeling his eyes on him at a crime scene or in the office or at the bar. Occasionally he had been able to surreptitiously study Robbie not so surreptitiously studying him. The looks had felt speculative to begin with. Assessing, maybe. And then they had begun to feel … appreciative. James had felt himself glow when he caught those looks, although to others he suspected it looked more like blushing.

  
Recently, though, Robbie had stopped looking away when James looked up, had stopped pretending to be doing anything other than looking at James. Had held his gaze unreservedly and with no small degree of heat. Or so James had thought.

  
Now, though, he thought himself a fool, only seeing what he wanted to see, and not the cold, hard truth. While his heart had been skipping far too many beats at the thought Robbie might return his feelings, his subconscious it seemed had been keeping a careful eye on proceedings and drawing its own conclusions. That had been his only saving grace.

  
Yes, James was convinced the dream had been his subconscious’ way of telling him to wise up. That Robbie Lewis was no more interested in him than the man in the moon. Dr. Hobson was clearly who he had set his heart on and James was a pathetic fool to imagine anything else.

  
Of course, ever loyal, he still couldn’t bring himself to believe that the real Robbie could be so callous as to consciously exploit James’ feelings for him in order to make headway with the good doctor. But Robbie had a subconscious, too. It was just possible, James suspected, that perhaps he had been unwittingly playing up to James’ attraction to him to make himself appear a better catch to Dr. Hobson. To make her as green with envy as James now found himself.

  
He tried to put the dream out of his mind, to not let it spill over into the real world and his relationship with Robbie, but life never lets one off the hook that easily. Especially if your name’s James Hathaway, card-carrying arachnophobe, aesthete and all-round human disaster area when it comes to relationships. With the best will in the world, it was nigh on impossible for him not to act any differently around the man who inspired such love and unwavering devotion in him.

  
The first time it leaked out Robbie had simply patted him on the back for a job well done and James had been unable to control the flinch that crossed his face. Robbie, eagle-eyed as ever, had caught it, inevitably, just as James had caught the look of confusion on Robbie’s face in return. A look he saw again later that day when he haltingly declined the inspector’s invitation to the pub after work.

  
The next time it happened they had been sifting through bank records, ‘following the money’ as it were, for a case. James had been the first to find what they were looking for and Robbie had been at his side in a thrice, leaning close to pore over the damning piece of evidence, his hand settling on James’ shoulder as he did so. James felt the touch as surely as fire and jerked away as if he’d been burned. The look on Robbie’s face this time was one of pure hurt, though James was sure he must’ve imagined that. It was much more likely to have been confusion again, or exasperation, or chagrin at being treated as if he was contagious all of a sudden.

  
The time after that they were in the pathology lab with Dr. Hobson, the victim in their latest case laid out on the table between them and her. Robbie’s hand had drifted to the small of James’ back, just as if it belonged there and had every right to touch, and, oh God, how James had missed that touch. But he refused to give into this weakness.

  
When he quickly, and rather obviously, stepped away out of Robbie’s reach the look he caught on the older man’s face this time seemed to be one of sadness and weary acceptance. Resignation. What he had resigned himself to, James had no idea. Maybe it was just his subconscious finally giving up as a bad job the attempt to use James to make Laura jealous.

  
The invitations to the pub had petered out by this stage. There had been no beer and takeaway and watching crap telly on Robbie’s couch for weeks now. And James had never felt more alone, which for him was saying something. But still the memory of that dream hung over him. He wasn’t who Robbie wanted and there was no use pretending otherwise. It was better to establish clear boundaries between them so he wouldn’t forget that fact again.

  
Of course, clear boundaries went straight out the window when the latest villainous don of the week held a gun to Robbie’s head, causing James to lose his.

  
In the end Robbie had managed to escape the murderous, not to mention pompous, professor’s clutches relatively easily. He hadn’t been a copper for over thirty years and not learned how to deliver a well-aimed, well-timed elbow to the ribs, after all.

  
What he had a harder time with was holding James back from killing the bastard with his bare hands. But there had been the definite shadow of a smile on his face as he did so. A look that reminded James of the one he got when one of his hunches that they thought had missed the mark had turned out to be on the money after all. Like the last piece of a puzzle had slotted into place and he could finally see the whole picture for what it was, James realised later, back at the station, when his heart rate had returned to normal and he wasn’t seeing red anymore.

  
Before he could summon the nerve to ask exactly what it was Robbie thought he had figured out, however, Dr. Hobson strode in and enquired after them both, Robbie’s run-in with an armed killer the talk of the station. The ever modest Lewis played it down, naturally, proclaiming it nothing more than “a case of handbags at 50 paces”. James didn’t even attempt to hide the scowl that showed exactly what he thought of that claim and Laura didn’t miss it.

  
“I don’t think that’s quite how your sergeant sees it, Inspector Lewis,” she teased. Good-naturedly, James knew, but irksome to him nonetheless.

  
“Yeah, well, he’s always been a right melodramatic sod him, hasn’t he?” Robbie twinkled right back at her before throwing James a smile that took his breath away. His mind flashed back to waking up in a hospital bed to find his boss standing over him, in the aftermath of the Zoë Kenneth debacle.

  
“ _You saved me._ ”

  
“ _Don’t be so melodramatic._ ”

  
Even then, after having walked ( _no, probably **ran**_ , James would wager) into a burning building and carrying James out, after having literally saved his life just as surely as he’d been figuratively saving it since the day they met, Robbie had still belittled his own actions. Dismissing his strength and bravery, his own innate decency, as no big deal. Nothing special. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing anyone else wouldn’t have done. James wanted to shake him sometimes and make him see how extraordinary he was. Other times, he wanted to hold him close and make him promise never to change. He hoped Dr. Hobson couldn’t read all that on his face.

  
If she did, it didn’t stop her asking her next question. One that tinted James’ vision green again.

  
“Well, is the conquering hero free for dinner tonight? I’d like to hear more about this storm in a teacup that Sergeant Hathaway seems to think was more of a raging tempest.”

  
James held his breath, silently wishing he was anywhere else right then so as not to have to hear Robbie’s almost guaranteed acceptance of her invitation. As it turned out he didn’t need to wish to be anywhere but where he was.

  
“Ah, thanks for the thought, Laura, but I’m going to have to decline. I’ve got other plans for tonight,” he replied, sounding almost nervous to James’ ears. And had his eyes flickered momentarily in James’ direction? _No, they couldn’t have. Just imagining things again, you fool._

  
He was so busy wondering why his boss sounded unsure about plans that were important enough to warrant turning down an invitation to dinner with the woman he wanted, and what exactly those plans might be, he nearly didn’t catch the rest of their conversation.

  
“Another time, maybe,” Robbie offered, more out of politeness than enthusiasm, James thought, before chastising himself for indulging in wishful thinking again.

  
“Of course, rain check it is then,” she smiled, and once again James imagined he saw something like resignation, but on her face this time. Something akin to the look on Robbie’s the day James had so deliberately stepped out of his reach.

  
Squaring her shoulders, she levelled them both with one of her patented meaningful looks that neither of them usually had the first clue how to decipher, before turning on her heel with a decisive little nod of her head.

  
“Have a good night, boys!” she trilled as she swept out of the office. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” she added, just before she disappeared from view, firing off a quick wink and what could only be described as a cheeky grin at James that left him utterly perplexed. _What was all that about??_

  
“Right then,” Robbie said, clapping his hands together briskly and interrupting James’ train of thought, which was probably for the best seeing as it was currently stalled at the crowded station James and every other man in existence knew as _Women, I’ll never understand them_.

  
Robbie, resolutely _not_ looking at James, grabbed his jacket and busied himself bundling into it. “Tonight. You, me, my place, 8 o'clock. Don’t be late. And bring a bottle of something. Red, preferably. It’ll go better with what I’m cooking.”

  
To all intents and purposes he appeared all business, his words confident, but James knew him well enough to detect the hint of nerves just beneath the surface. Still he didn’t look at James. _What the hell was going on?? Had someone put something in the coffee?? Had he sustained a blow to the head during his tussle with the dastardly don that James had somehow missed?? Because he couldn’t mean what it sounded like he meant ... Could he?_

  
He was almost at the door before James could find his voice, and even then all he could manage was a weak, wavering, “Sir?”

  
Robbie paused, head down, eyes still averted, before responding.

  
“No ‘sir’ tonight, Sergeant. No, and no ‘sergeant’ either. Tonight it’ll just be ‘James’ and ‘Robbie’ and a talk we should have had long ago. After that … well, after that it’ll be up to you, but I hope it’ll be ‘James and Robbie’, together, just like that, from here on out. But we’ll talk about all that later. Now, get yourself home, Hathaway, and get your best bib and tucker on.”

  
Finally he looked up, meeting James’ eye with a shy smile. “I’ve always wanted to see what you consider appropriate first date attire,” he said softly. And with that he ducked his head again and hurried out without so much as a backward glance.

  
_Just as well_ , James thought, when his brain had come back online enough to form coherent thoughts, _because I doubt my standing here gaping like a slack-jawed idiot would constitute an attractive look_.

  
Had that really just happened? Had Robbie ‘bloody light and love of his life’ Lewis actually just intimated to James that he returned his feelings and tonight they would be discussing said feelings on their _first date_? Or was James dreaming again? He pinched himself, just to be sure. But no, he was awake. He was awake, _and he had a date with Robbie._ **Tonight**.

  
He took a minute to let that sink in, a beatific smile spreading across his face as he realised, yes, this was real. Robbie wanted _him_ , not anyone else. He had turned Laura down for _him_. Bugger James’ subconscious. He had been self-sabotaging, as usual. Unable to believe he was worthy of love, and especially that of someone as warm and wise, witty and wonderful, and evidently inspiring of alliteration as Robbie. But also as usual it had been Robbie who had opened his eyes and shown him the error of his ways. Which left only one question really.

  
_What the hell was he going to wear?_

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again! If you made it this far, thank you for reading. I hope it wasn't too excruciating an experience. If you feel like saying hi, please feel free to do so, either in the comments here or over on tumblr where I'm also known as novemberhush. Thanks again for reading. xxx


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